Societal Cost of 'Forever Chemicals' About $17.5 Trillion Across Global Economy (theguardian.com) 62
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The societal cost of using toxic PFAS or "forever chemicals" across the global economy totals about $17.5 trillion annually, a new analysis of the use of the dangerous compounds has found. Meanwhile, the chemicals yield comparatively paltry profits for the world's largest PFAS manufacturers -- about $4 billion annually. The report, compiled by ChemSec, a Sweden-based NGO that works with industry and policymakers to limit the use of toxic chemicals, partially aims to highlight how the "astronomical" cost of using PFAS is shouldered by governments typically forced to fund the cleanup of pollution and individuals who suffer from health consequences. "If you compare the profits that they make and the cost to society -- it's ridiculous," said Peter Pierrou, ChemSec's communications director.
PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals often used to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. The chemicals are ubiquitous, and linked at low levels of exposure to cancer, thyroid disease, kidney dysfunction, birth defects, autoimmune disease and other serious health problems. They are called "forever chemicals" because they do not naturally degrade. The chemicals are thought to be contaminating drinking water for at least 200 million Americans, while watchdogs have identified thousands of industrial polluters. Similar widespread contamination persists throughout Europe.
ChemSec found 12 companies account for most of the world's PFAS production and pollution. Among them are 3M, Chemours, Solvay, Daiki, Honeywell, BASF, Merk and Bayer, though 3M this year announced it would discontinue making PFAS in part because of regulatory pressure and litigation. [...] The analysis broke down societal costs into four categories. Soil and water remediation are the most expensive, followed by healthcare costs and bio-monitoring of PFAS pollution. While the average market price of PFAS is [about $20.75] for each kilogram, the price spikes to about [$20,456.78] for each kilogram when societal costs are factored in. Beyond profits and pollution, the analysis also provides a closer look at how the chemicals are used across the economy, and whether those uses are "essential" or "non-essential." Banning non-essential uses would probably spell the end of the chemicals in most consumer goods and cut deeply into the industry's profits.
PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals often used to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. The chemicals are ubiquitous, and linked at low levels of exposure to cancer, thyroid disease, kidney dysfunction, birth defects, autoimmune disease and other serious health problems. They are called "forever chemicals" because they do not naturally degrade. The chemicals are thought to be contaminating drinking water for at least 200 million Americans, while watchdogs have identified thousands of industrial polluters. Similar widespread contamination persists throughout Europe.
ChemSec found 12 companies account for most of the world's PFAS production and pollution. Among them are 3M, Chemours, Solvay, Daiki, Honeywell, BASF, Merk and Bayer, though 3M this year announced it would discontinue making PFAS in part because of regulatory pressure and litigation. [...] The analysis broke down societal costs into four categories. Soil and water remediation are the most expensive, followed by healthcare costs and bio-monitoring of PFAS pollution. While the average market price of PFAS is [about $20.75] for each kilogram, the price spikes to about [$20,456.78] for each kilogram when societal costs are factored in. Beyond profits and pollution, the analysis also provides a closer look at how the chemicals are used across the economy, and whether those uses are "essential" or "non-essential." Banning non-essential uses would probably spell the end of the chemicals in most consumer goods and cut deeply into the industry's profits.
Re:Pull the other one for hand cream (Score:5, Insightful)
I looked for the report, but it isn't available yet. Apparently this guardian reporter got a preview before it was published. Yes, it does seem likely that the numbers are exaggerated. These kind of reports always take the worst possible interpretation of everything for the sake of publicity, but it does seem likely that the actual cost is going to be very substantial. That kind of cleanup isn't cheap... if you actually do it, and don't just pretend that the problem isn't there.
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We have created a situation where modern life makes us ill, and the people causing the illness are also selling us stuff to mitigate it like painkillers and anti-depressants.
Essentially they outsource the cost of their business to you. You are the one who has to buy meds and air purifiers and bottled water, because their business screwed up the environment and your job stresses you out.
It would be much cheaper overall to have a "wellness economy". Sounds like some hippy crap, but it basically just means tha
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Most rich people inherited wealth.
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Let me get this straight. Teflon pans are causing a hole in the world economy the size of the US GDP? All we do is get rid of them and we could solve world hunger and have enough to fund a tether belt to the moon?
Re:Pull the other one for hand cream (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope. There is a whole zoo of these and they are doing damage. Whether the 17T number is actually realistic is not that relevant. The amount of pain and suffering caused is.
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the 17T is relevant because its an obvious exaggeration
Why? What makes it so obvious? Have you even read the Wikipedia article on the health effects, let alone any more voluble set of sources? These chemicals have extremely wide-ranging effects, which should not be surprising. Their immense stability is what makes them so very damaging. And while like everyone else including you I haven't seen the report yet, one way you could easily get to a figure like that is to account for the total projected costs. Even if we stopped making more of these chemicals today, w
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Ah yes, flamebait for considering reality
Slashdot, you're going to have to do something about this if you don't want to continue to be the low-rent CNN discussion boards.
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US alone from just 5 conditions (there is a ton more) is $5B/year and that does not include any compensation for pain and suffering.
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Let me get this straight. Teflon pans are causing a hole in the world economy the size of the US GDP? All we do is get rid of them and we could solve world hunger and have enough to fund a tether belt to the moon
Well we could have but we didn’t and we’re also not going to spend the money on PFAS but yeah the total externalized cost to everyone that we’ll just live and die with, yeah.
Re:Pull the other one for hand cream (Score:5, Insightful)
You cannot "trace" diffuse effects like low birth weight, childhood obesity, hypothyroidism in women, and kidney and testicular cancers individually. You can statistically analyse the situation and notice that there is more of this crap than should be. Apparently the additional cases of these 5 things already make for more than $5B/year in cost in the US alone (!), and the pain and suffering of those affected is very much not included in that figure.
There are, of course, more negative effects. For example, general obesity (sounds like a country you know?), decreased fertility (probably a good thing long-term), prostate cancer (yikes!), and quite a bit of others. Also, waste-water treatment gets a lot more expensive and so does cleaning up drinking water.
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$5B/year is not 17T$ / year.
That $5B/year figure was:
1. for just five effects, not the entire damage produced, and
2. "for the US alone", where the US is 4% of the world's population.
Can't guess where the $17T figure comes from until we actually see the report that produced the figure, but the numbers to which you are objecting are not necessarily inconsistent with that.
Re: Pull the other one for hand cream (Score:2)
17T is roughly 17% of global GDP. Thatâ(TM)s the equivalent of a cost of $4T for the US alone. If 5 effects cost the US$5bn, i.e. $1bn per condition / effect, then we are talking of roughly 4,000 different things each costing the economy $1bn. The numbers are incredible. Extraordinary even. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence!
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The US is not the world and these 5 conditions are far from all damage done. Your point?
2 things (Score:2)
2) Having said that, this $17 trillion is way out of line. The horrors of PFAS are driven more by the prospects of lucrative settlements than actual science. The reason they hang around so long is that they are inert. Think about that for a bit. Inert!
Just my opinion.
Re:2 things (Score:4, Informative)
As to 2), you are obviously not familiar with basic chemistry. Ever heard of things like "catalysators"? They can massively influence chemical reactions but are themselves often unaffected. How easily something breaks down is not a valid measure for how much chemical (or medical) effect it has.
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Ever heard of things like "catalysators"?
I haven't. Although it is apparently a valid English word, I've only ever heard "catalyst."
Your point still stands. Though in reality, it's much worse. PFAS can directly bind to estrogen, androgen, and thyroid receptors - this is the reason they are classed as endocrine disruptors. They directly affect hormone levels, steroid levels, and can lead to chronic inflammation and decreased immune function.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
It's one of those things where trying to fearmonger at an accurate scale
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But to me it's shocking that the press & politicians don't seem to care about quality of life. The harm that PFAS do the people & their families is horrific enough in & of itself. Horrified by 9/11? That's a drop in the bucket compared to the harm caused by PFAS. They've been around
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to me it's shocking that the press & politicians don't seem to care about quality of life.
The press ultimately works for the advertisers, and the politicians work for the corporations, and they're the same "people" — actually corporations, which not being living beings, can't have ethics or morality, only policies and procedures that they may or may not follow– or intend to follow. The press cannot continue to do even the part of their job they can get away with doing unless they remain employed.
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But to me it's shocking that the press & politicians don't seem to care about quality of life.
Indeed. To me, that is the real evil being done here. Some moderate profits are considered worth more than all the pain and suffering caused. This is "indifferent evil" and should get those practicing it to any significant degree a firing squad to express to them an adequate appreciation of their contribution to society.
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Can estimate the losses in productivity, revenues/profits, taxes, etc., due to people being off work sick more often, medical costs, medical bankruptcies, people leaving work to care for sick family members, etc..
Not if you can't estimate how much of that is attributable to exposure to PFAS.
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Soo, because I occasionally mess up a translation (English is not my first language and I never lived in an English speaking country) you now have the audacity to conclude I am an idiot? Well, I guess you either never learned a second language or you never use it...
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Why should I care? Wake me up when I have to pay some out of pocket cost for this. Otherwise, it is the price of progress, having nice things and living as something other than cavemen or nomadic hunters.
And there you have it: the normal human reaction to any such warnings. Very possibly why we will be extinct fairly soon. TFA says:
"The societal cost of using toxic PFAS or "forever chemicals" across the global economy totals about $17.5 trillion annually, a new analysis of the use of the dangerous compounds has found. Meanwhile, the chemicals yield comparatively paltry profits for the world's largest PFAS manufacturers -- about $4 billion annually".
Hmmmm. $4 billion for me, at a cost of $17.5 trillion for y
What about the profits by everyone else (Score:3, Insightful)
While I hate defending the chem industry, I have to say that presenting the profit of the companies as the only benefit is quite misleading. Industry income would be a slightly better measure, although still a bad one. For example, salaries paid are not profit, but they are still definitely created value. Paid salaries do not just disappear in a puff of smoke. They are quite valuable to the workers and through them, the society.
Also, the primary producers are not the only ones who benefit from these chemicals ... if primary production was the only source of profit, nobody would be buying then in the first place. Applying the same method of counting to the profits of the electronics industry, we would get a value of maybe a hundred million dollars: silicon production value was estimated at $6.3 billion in 2019, but profits are a thin slice of the value.
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agreed. If the chemical companies were non-profits where any profit is used toward engineering cleanup efforts and such, under the pretense that the products are required for society, I'd probably be ok with it.
Sniff test failed (Score:4)
I struggle to believe that even the wildest estimates put the annual cost of PFAS at 15% of global GDP. For comparison, healthcare only makes up 11% of global GDP. It's just not plausible.
That the report is not available [chemsec.org] from the source makes the assertion downright laughable.
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could this be estimate cost of cleanup?
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Cleanup of forever chemicals is like cleanup of past coal plant emissions, essentially impossible. There are places where they're concentrated where we could focus efforts to prevent further widespread contamination, though.
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From my understanding of the externalized costs, a good amount is healthcare. If healthcare is 11%, how is 15% for the whole thing not possible ? Everyone is in agreement that the numbers are most likely inflated, but I don't think it is downright laughable.
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Great. Yeah another conservative asshole with a two-figure IQ claiming he deserves to be considered equal to people with morals and ethics.
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Nice troll attempt. Just sayin'.
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another bullshit issue for which someone can claim they are due "reparations."
To the extent that they knew that their products were causing problems and were deliberately putting out fraudulent propaganda in order to continue to profit from it, why shouldn't they have to pay for what they did? 3M had to pay Minnesota $850M for pollution related to Scotch-Gard.
Two points contradict (Score:4, Insightful)
"Meanwhile, the chemicals yield comparatively paltry profits for the world's largest PFAS manufacturers -- about $4 billion annually."
"Banning non-essential uses would probably spell the end of the chemicals in most consumer goods and cut deeply into the industry's profits."
If the profits are a paltry $4B for all manufacturers combined, then how fucking "deeply" into their overall profits could whacking this $4B possibly be? Probably not even a rounding error on their combined balance sheet.
PFAS (Score:5, Insightful)
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Indeed. This stuff is nasty. It is a statistical thing though, so many people are not smart enough to understand what it does, see also Covid and vaccination, for example.
I doubt there are many corporate shills in here though. My take is these are mostly "useful idiots", i.e. they do not even get paid for their lies. I think many people are just intellectually incapable to deal with the facts of the upcoming and already happening environmental catastrophes and hence practice aggressive denial. Obviously, th
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Sure, the reports stinks. But, its really building on other works. We have known for decades about the dangers and costs of endochrine disruptors, which PFAS are: https://www.thelancet.com/jour... [thelancet.com].
From 2016: recently estimated the economic burden due to the health effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) to be US$340 billion in the USA and $217 billion in Europe.
I argue that at 0.5T/yr just for this aspect, it is still worth acting upon, no sense protecting a 4b industry.
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I can't wait for the day where the mass population wakes and realizes that corporations making money is not a holy given right. Tying the 401k pensions to corporations was a genius moves. no ones wants to risk their pensions.
Essential and Non-Essential (Score:1)
So the chemicals have "Essential" uses. But it appears that the the writer is advocating banning non-essential uses.
OK, this has been done before. DDT. Its use was banned generally. Mostly, it went unnoticed by the great majority of people. But those in malaria-bearing areas definitely noticed. Did they die by the 1000's, millions, or more? I don't know, but die they did, of malaria that was permitted to propagate in the mosquitos that were not killed for lack of DDT being spread. Oh, you s
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Mosquitoes and malaria are far more visible and quantifiable than chronic illness and organ tissue damage. This is good for corporations because dangerous chemicals can affect millions or billions of people and it's way too easy to believe the harm is small because you can't see it.
PFAS are very much like that. They bind to estrogen/androgen/thyroid receptors and make a mess with steroid production and hormone regulation. They mimic fatty acids in other ways and also affect glucose and lipid metabolism.
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Situations like this usually drive innovation in alternatives. However, in this case, seems live they are going with worst: https://www.un.org/africarenew... [un.org].
Seems like DDT never went out of fashion until recently though.
Propaganda (Score:2)
The report is from an activist NGO. I would put zero faith in the numbers. Has it been peer-reviewed? Hahahahaha, right.